I just realized I haven’t written in my personal blog for a long time. In fact, the last time I wrote, I was still the CEO of Axosoft. A lot has changed since then. Where to begin…
First off, Lawdan Shojaee (aka my better half) is now the CEO of Axosoft. She’s always been there behind the scenes, but about 6 months ago, after a brief search of potential CEO candidates to run Axosoft (more on why later), I asked Lawdan if she would step into the CEO role. I wanted Lawdan to help re-energize Axosoft with a fresh, creative perspective.
This week, after months of hard work and preparation, Axosoft is kicking off a world-class marketing campaign as part of its sponsorship of the Girls in Tech conference.
The campaign is simple, beautiful and rich with content and meaning. It helps right a wrong, and converts a decades old, universally known symbol, into a feeling of pride and enabledment. Internally, Axosoft team members love the campaign. It’s rare for people to pay attention to a marketing campaign in general, but on the day the stickers for the campaign came out, many Axosoft employees were sharing images of their computers with the stickers on them as a show of pride:
From this point forward, Axosoft has turned a symbol that you see dozens of times every week, into a reminder of the power of looking at things differently. I’m reminded of the “Think Different” Apple campaign when Steve Jobs first took over at Apple in the late 90s.
Today, the hashtag #itwasneveradress is born. Something tells me, that female bathroom symbol is never going to be viewed the same again.
The creative team at Axosoft, lead by one of the most creative people I know, is seriously thinking differently. This quality of campaign is what one would expect from a fortune 500 company – a Nike or a Reebok – the fact that it’s coming from Axosoft makes me full of joy.